


Denial

by River_of_Dreams



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternative Ending of Season 5, Brotherly feels, Depression, Gen, Gore, Last-minute choices, Not A Fix-It, The Apocalypse, Vessel Sam, and other body parts, loss of limb, not a tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 03:50:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7785673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/River_of_Dreams/pseuds/River_of_Dreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was supposed to be clear-cut. Michael wins, he kills Lucifer, there will be Paradise. Lucifer wins, he kills Michael, wipes out humanity.<br/>As if reality was ever so simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Denial

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kajune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kajune/gifts).



> Dedicated to Kajune, with whom we once had a delightful conversation about Raphael. :) It inspired me to include Raphael as an important player in this little fic.

It couldn’t have ended any other way.

Michael is powerful, always was: the tiniest bit stronger, the tiniest bit smarter. Just enough to turn most mock fights they’ve ever had into his victory. Three out of four, or thereabouts.

But Lucifer is more vicious, more ruthless, and from the moment Michael showed up in an empty vessel that was only halfway to best, he knew.

He nearly lost, still. Not to Michael, but to the soul inside himself. The same strong will that made Sam Winchester a superior vessel also made him a danger, a tether that pulled taut when Lucifer wanted to finally let go on Dean. Dean, the man who tipped the scales by denying his brother, the insolent rebel who made the mistake of showing up among his betters. It was a near thing and a show of self-restraint, to stop before it was too late. Before the tether changed into shackles.

It also showed him the way to win. Lucifer reached out, healed the older Winchester and put him to peaceful sleep, and that was when Sam’s struggles weakened. Before long, all the radiant energy of his soul became Lucifer’s to draw from as he wished.

Because that was the similarity between him and Michael and the Winchesters.

It was never really about the world.

 

Despite the disadvantage, Michael fought, hoping to win before the level of their vessels becomes a factor. Like every weapon of mass destruction, they needed time to warm up to their full potential. The battle raged on for days; the Stull Cemetery, where it started, remained mostly unscathed; the Himalayas, where it ended, will never be the same.

Pressing his brother into the ruins of what was once the tallest mountain on Earth, Lucifer thinks – vaguely, all capacity for clear thought long gone – it’s a fitting tomb to Michael’s pride.

They are both barely conscious, battered and bloody and leaking grace.

Too exhausted even to feel triumph, Lucifer stares at his brother and knows he’s one last savage act away from victory. His fingers, charred from the power they hold, skeletal and sharp like talons, are already squeezed around Michael’s neck, ready to tear the last wisp of grace out of him together with the vessel’s spine.

Then what?

Beyond victory. Beyond the destruction of the human race.

What is there for him?

Michael’s mouth moves, but his airways are pressed too tight to make sound and the shapes of flesh are nonsense Lucifer cannot read. Michael has stopped struggling. Lucifer would like to claim he sees defiance in his remaining eye, but probably Michael is as emptied of emotion and coherent thought as Lucifer is.

It’s the end.

All this time, driven towards the Apocalypse, this is the thought Lucifer avoided having.

It’s not a new beginning. It’s the end, the world bleak without Michael in it, without Gabriel. With the rest of their siblings horrified and fleeing or twisted in Lucifer’s image. He doesn’t have it in him to lead them to anything other than destruction. He has nothing to give them but Hell.

He can kill Michael. He cannot win. He cannot get back the world he once loved.

Lucifer is too tired to laugh. Or to weep. Or to appreciate how thoroughly his Father decided to crush him, giving him a life where all options result in a dead end.

But he can pick a dead end he likes best.

He nearly overbalances when he tries to support his weight on his left hand. He forgot he doesn’t have one anymore. So he shuffles closer on his knees, movements slow like wading through tar, and releases his brother’s throat. Michael’s lips move again, but if they make any sound this time, Lucifer is too far gone to hear it.

He rests the blackened bones of his fingertips against his brother’s forehead and _gives_.

…

Michael barely hears it when Raphael alights next to him. He continues carding his good hand through Lucifer’s vessel’s hair, his attention on the thready, irregular beating of its heart.

The speck of grace next to it is nearly invisible, cradled deep within the vessel’s ragged, spent soul.

“You have won,“ Raphael proclaims, voice deep and steady and just a little too slow to be certain.

“I have lost,“ Michael says. “Lucifer gave himself to heal me. I think there’s any grace left in him only because he passed out before he could give that, too.“

Raphael shifts. Michael carefully picks apart strands of hair, though all it does is to coat his fingers in more layers of blood and dust.

“Maybe he realized at the end that his cause is not just?“ Raphael offers.

“I don’t know.“

Raphael shifts again.

“This wasn’t written.“

“It was not.“

The vessel’s heart continues to tap its unsteady rhythm against its cage. Falters, picks up again.

Michael doesn’t know what he’s doing. Lucifer’s last act of defiance tore them all out of the pages of the script and threw them into the void. Michael sighs.

Better find his footing, and fast.

“What is the state of the world?“

“Hell is purged clean, but many demons escaped and found their vessels. It will take a while to weed them out.“

“And humanity?“

“Significantly thinned but not extinct. The lower ranks are sorting out all the new arrivals to Heaven as we speak.“

It doesn’t sound like Paradise.

If Michael is being honest, he never thought it would.

“Can you heal us both?“ he requests.

“Are you sure it’s wise?“

No. Right now, he’s not sure about anything. He suspects that was Lucifer’s point.

“Lucifer did this,“ he says. “So I want him around to deal with the mess.“

He can feel Raphael’s gaze on him, heavy and knowing. He doesn’t care.

After a while, Raphael kneels down next to them, and that’s all that matters.

…

They are a mess, Lucifer and Michael both.

The world isn’t far behind them.

Raphael stifles a sigh and kneels down, taking in the state of the brother he hasn’t seen for millennia. Resentment bubbling slow and deep beneath the surface of his mind.

It was supposed to be over. A world at peace. Himself… No, he doesn’t think he could take on his old mantle again, but he was looking forward to a time of rest. No big decisions to make. No hope to fight. Surely even Michael would settle in their loss if the battle was won and their Father remained gone.

The end of the mortal agony of Heaven and humanity alike that lasted far too long.

Instead he has this, this new complication. And Michael expects him to be a healer once more, for a brother who caused it all.

He takes in the torn, twisted tangle of soul, grace and flesh and swallows the temptation to erase it out of existence. Sweep it off his table, so to speak.

Michael doesn’t want him to.

Michael still fights to make sense of a world that lost its meaning long, long ago.

More importantly, Michael never wanted to let go of Lucifer and he isn’t going to, now that Lucifer gave him a new, wretched reason to hope. They are both the same, those stupid brothers of his. Give them a thread to hang on, they’ll act as if it was a sturdy rope.

He can’t do this anymore.

But he must.

He touches the vessel’s forehead and knits the flesh together, not bothering to replace the missing hand. He just needs the whole thing to stop dying so that he can turn his attention to the more delicate parts.

He examines those and despairs. There are places where Lucifer drew so hard on the power of the soul at his disposal that he effectively fused them together. There’s no afterlife awaiting Sam Winchester, that much is clear. If he wants to restore Lucifer, he will have to carefully remove the soul entangled with him, piece by piece, and then replace what’s missing. It’s going to be a long, exhausting, precarious work.

Or he could use the mess Lucifer made of himself. Stabilize what is already there, the soul supporting grace and grace supporting the soul. It would be considerably easier.

It’s not Raphael’s place to extend judgment; those who had the authority are dead and Michael, Father’s chosen executioner, will not do his duty. But he likes this.

Becoming one with a human. What a fitting punishment for Lucifer’s pride.

Raphael doesn’t smile, but he does feel more energized, somehow lighter, when he pushes a steady hand into the vessel’s ribcage and starts his work.

“There,“ he says after a long while. “That’s the best I could do.“

It’s not even a lie, in a way.

…

Not even Raphael knows what will greet them when the angel-human chimera in front of them regains consciousness.

The best he could do, Raphael said before he healed Michael. It took all of Michael’s spent, frayed willpower not to demand more, to keep himself from yelling at Raphael to return his closest brother to him, whole and safe.

Raphael doesn’t deserve the treatment.

The vessel’s eyes flutter, then open, unfocused.

“…Dean?“ it croaks.

 

After a quick examination, Michael carries Sam Winchester to the outskirts of Detroit, leaving the hunter while he’s still disoriented, unable to ask questions. The Enochian sigils on his ribs remain intact, as does the anti-possession tattoo on his chest. Michael adds a few more protections – and an anchor so that he can regularly check on the man.

One day, he knows, his brother will return, but for now it’s no use keeping the vessel in custody.

Curled up deep within Sam Winchester’s soul, Lucifer sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> Any feedback most appreciated! (Including criticism.)


End file.
